Kanpai

Killing Commute Time on Japanese Railways

The suburbs of Japanese cities are densely packed jungles of buildings. It's almost impossible to tell where one city ends and another begins. And the fact is, the major city centers (think Osaka, Kobe, Tokyo) are very major indeed. A huge number of people commute to and from these places every day of the year. From satellite, Japan must resemble a range of termite mountains.

My experiences of train journeys in Japan range from the pleasant (nice scenery, a good seated view) to the life-squashing (Tokyo's Yamanote Line on a Monday morning, being forcibly shoved onto the train and then not able to move an inch until everybody falls out further down the line) to slightly disturbing (the pressure gets too much, a crazy guy cracks and begins to scream while biting the shoes of his neighbors). Real experiences, folks!

I took a train down to the south of Kyoto last night to visit a friend. It was a bad time to do so -- 5.30 pm -- but thankfully, I had room to breathe. This was a relatively pleasant trip. In fact, people even appeared as individuals instead of one heaving mass. Which, you know, is nice (but not always the case at peak commute time).

Kyoto Eki - One of the coolest major stations in Japan.

On that journey, in the same carriage, were three people with handheld consoles. The young chap to the left of me, evidently a professional, was wired into his GBA-SP. The schoolgirl to the right was playing a game on her DS (without using a stylus, I noticed, so perhaps it was a GBA game). And the third character in this Nintendrama? A woman probably in her late '50s, visibly enjoying Nintendogs on her DS.

This Nintendomination (let's see how long we can keep this word-match game going) was not an isolated incident; it's actually a typical scenario. On the rare occasions that I see someone using a PSP in public, the player is invariably a young-ish male. With Nintendo's band of portables, though, you can expect just about anyone to be a player. I've seen this with people who seem to be in their '60s: instead of indulging in an age-befitting hobby -- reminiscing, knitting, or complaining -- they are into games. How cool is that?

As well as bridging the gap between young and old, Nintendo's handhelds also smash gender barriers. Lately, this has been emphasized even more. Nintendo's Japanese TV ads for games such as Touch! Kirby and Nintendogs show female players enjoying the games, without even so much as a hint that men might find entertainment here.